He was a slacker and I was in junior management. He wore khaki shorts to work with a t-shirt that said ‘Hate Me’ across the front and wouldn’t stop spinning around in his chair; I would not be seen without full makeup, heals and business-casual appropriate attire. I wanted a promotion and he wanted to hang out in the cafeteria eating sausage wraps. I said things like “I would like to hear more empathy on your calls with customers, and you’ll need to personalize each call by saying your customers’ name at least 3 times before you deliver a professional closing” to which he would whip off his headset and reply “did you just say that you think I’m totally hot?”.
Eventually, he was handed a management position and was sharing a desk with me. One day, I was explaining to him the importance of always saving his emails in a special folder and making triplicate copies of every written form that his direct reports had signed, and he was busily hitting DELETE DELETE DELETE on his inbox and saying “Yeah! Uh-huh! Yes!! Oh! Mm-hmm!”. I had gotten quite used to this. I reminded him that it was almost time for the management meeting in which we would share the cookies we were all required to make the night before at which time he immediately grabbed his plate of cookies and ran. I had gotten pretty used to this too but was in no mood to be defeated again. I grabbed my plate of cookies, tucked them under my arm and headed for the other door at a sprint.
Now, the building we worked in housed about 1500 employees – all of which were now slowly standing up one by one, trying to find out who was blowing by their cubicles, screaming maniacal phrases including “NOT THIS TIME!! YOU WILL NOT WIN THIS TIME DAMMIT!!” and “DID YOU JUST LOOK AT MY PACKAGE??”.
Although he’ll probably tell you differently (he’ll be lying), I won. But most importantly, it was one of the many moments that made it glaringly apparent to me that I couldn’t spend one minute of my life without this man.
We got married two years after we met, and tomorrow will be our two year anniversary. Sometimes its hard to believe it’s already been two years, and then sometimes its hard to think that he hasn’t been by my side for my whole life, cheering me on and pulling me through, like he does now.
Who knew that the same guy that insisted on teaching me, loudly, how to properly dance the Sharks vs. Jets fight scene from West Side Story in front of our entire department, would be the same guy that taught me the meaning of beauty and grace. Who knew this was the man that would give me every single thing I ever wanted or needed – and then more? Who knew he’d be my every single thing? Who knew that?
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